Epona laughed.

Rosalind said, "Well, no matter now. At last I realized the truth and you will not fool me again. I heard you represented beauty, speed, and sexual vigor." "And bravery!"

"As you wish. Perhaps some of that could be true. However, you strongly resemble your mother. You look like a horse, albeit a beautiful horse, perhaps an Arabian."

Epona flew at her, her nails sharp as daggers. "You bitch! I am a beautiful woman, all say so."

Rosalind laughed as she held up her hand. Epona's nose smashed against her palm. Epona tried to draw back, but Rosalind's palm remained stuck to her nose. She laughed again. "Not only do you look like a horse, your power is pitiful. Where is Prince Egan?"

"Let me go or I will say nothing!"

"Ah, is that a neigh I heard? By all the gods, I pray Egan does not look like you, Epona." Rosalind drew back her hand from Epona's nose and wiped her palm on her cloak.

"Bring him to me now."

Epona cursed under her breath, a strange mixture of ancient Celtic and Latin words, all of them crude and graphic. Rosalind gave her a very cold smile. She felt viciousness sing through her blood. "I will not ask you again, Epona. I will reverse the spell of the witmas tea if you do not obey me. Ah, I wonder what you really look like?"

Epona vanished. Rosalind remained standing in the middle of the room. The air was silent and still. The curtains were no longer blowing inward from those closed windows. She heard a child's voice, coming closer. A boy child, and he was speaking. "Who am I to meet? There isn't anyone left that I have not met."

Rosalind listened, and waited. Suddenly he was in front of her, arms crossed over his chest, and he looked her up and down. He was perhaps eight, a finely knit boy, dark eyes, handsome. "Who are you, woman? What do you want with me? She said only that you were another stupid witch, not even from the Pale, and she would dig out your ugly eyes with her nails. She said she would drown you into eternity. She is very powerful. I would believe her."

"I am Isabella. You are Prince Egan, Sarimund's son?"

"Yes, who else would I be?"

She smiled down at the handsome little boy. "No, you are yourself, of course." Rosalind studied the boy. Did Nicholas look like him when he'd been a boy? They didn't look alike, precisely, but there were similarities, the olive tone of their skin, the dark, dark hair and eyes.

"I do not recognize you. Why do you wish to see me?"

I am in time to save him, to save Nicholas, and she wanted to shout with the relief of it. She whispered, "Nicholas."

51

"No, I am not this Nicholas. I am Egan. Why are you here, Isabella?"

"I am hare to save you from Epona."

"How can you possibly save me when I can outrun you, I can blight you into a white bug?"

Ah, the arrogance in his young voice. But it was Nicholas, she knew to her soul that it was, at least here in the Pale it was. She smiled. "Did Epona not tell you?" She could not bring herself to call the witch his mother, not when Epona wanted to murder him.

Egan said, "No, she never tells me anything of use. I wish to become a man. Sometimes I think that I have been this small size for far too long a time. But who can be certain of anything?"

"You will become a man, I swear it." And soon, she thought, soon now.

Suddenly, Epona was standing beside him, shaking her fist at him. "I am Epona. I am your mother."

"More's the pity," said the little boy.

"You will never be a man, you will never displace me!" In the next instant, Epona drew a knife and lunged toward the hay.

"No!" No time, no time. Rosalind hurled herself in front of the child, and felt the knife sink swift and smooth into her chest. She felt it sink into her heart, rend it clear in two, and settle deep inside her. She felt a great lassitude, a sense that time had somehow stopped, and she was trapped within it. She dropped slowly to the floor. She looked up at Prince Egan, who had fallen to his knees beside her, his small fingers hovering over the knife, but he did not touch it. A smile came out from deep inside her. "I have succeeded. You will be a man."

He said over and over, his hands fluttering over the knife, afraid to touch it, "No, you cannot die." His voice broke into a sob. He looked up at his mother. "You wanted to kill me. but she saved me. She gave her life to save me. You are more evil than even I believed."

"Now it is your turn, whelp," Epona said, and suddenly another knife appeared in her hand. "Your turn and then I shall rule and all will be as it was supposed to be. I always told Sarimund his spells were worth spit."

She raised the knife, but Egan didn't run. He jumped to his feet and faced her. He said, "You cannot kill me, you cannot. I am a wizard. I will not let you," and he pointed his finger at her and began to chant.

"You are a little nothing!" She raised the knife to plunge it into his heart, but the sound of running feet made her jerk up.

Nicholas ran into the white room, an ancient sword in his hand. He saw Rosalind lying on her back, so still, lifeless, a knife sticking from her heart. A small boy was leaning over her, his hand pressed against her shoulder.

"No!" He threw back his head and howled.

"Get out of here! She failed, you have no business here. He dies now, and there is nothing you can do about it, nothing!"

Nicholas felt pain so great fill him, choke him, he thought he would die with it. But he forced himself to look away from Rosalind, to look at the mad witch, at Epona, holding her knife poised and ready, knowing she'd killed Rosalind, knowing she would kill Egan as well if he did not stop her. It made the pain freeze. Now all he knew was wild rage. He wanted her blood on his hands, the smell of it in his nostrils.

Nicholas saw the witch rise off the floor, her white gown billowing around her, and fly directly at him, snarling, white teeth glistening. But now there wasn't a knife in her hand. Instead she held, in one thin white hand, a short ink-black spear, its tip so sharp it seemed to split the air.

Nicholas shouted, "Black witch, your demon lover gave you the sword, didn't he? Sent it up to you from Hell. What did he expect you to do with it-eat it with your hay?"

Epona hesitated a moment, screamed curses, and aimed the demon sword at him. Bright orange light shot from the end of it, lighting the still air, forming terrifying shapes.

He looked at his own sword, a very old sword, perhaps older than Captain Jared Vail, its handle bejeweled.

He then stared up at the creature who had killed his wife, his wife who'd willingly given her life for the boy. "You are a monstrous evil," he said, voice as soft as the night air. "It ends here, and I am the one to end it." And he leapt upward, slashing with his sword.

But Epona leapt up another five feet into the air, out of reach.

He was in the Pale. He could do anything at all. He rose straight up, his sword aimed at her. "Come fight me, witch, or perhaps you wish to gallop away from me?"

She hurled curses at his head and Nicholas flew nearer to her, only about six feet away from her, and he taunted her, laughed at her-"Your face is the color of fresh dead snow, and all those billowing white skirts-you are ridiculous, witch."

Epona howled at him. "You are nothing more than a mortal loosed upon us who believes himself powerful, but you are so new I can see the wet on your flanks!" She froze, moved farther away from him, hovered, then landed gracefully on the white floor.

He looked down at her, bored as a man six feet in the air could look. She yelled, "I did not mean to say flanks! A new colt has wet flanks, not a human."

Nicholas neighed down at her.